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Joe Winter – Portfolio

Brief BioResuméSelected Projects

TL;DR

I’m a software engineer based in Atlanta, GA, with a background in nonprofit management and public policy. I am passionate about making the world a better place through well-designed code. My coding philosophy: to build infrastructure that makes life easier for all of the project’s stakeholders — other developers, managers, and (most of all) the end users.

Recent Accomplishments

That’s me, teaching a group of artists how to build a website.

After making a graceful exit from C4 Atlanta, a nonprofit organization that I co-founded, I entered the Back End Engineering program at The Iron Yard code school in Atlanta, GA. The program gave me an opportunity to learn Ruby on Rails and, more importantly, improve my skills as a software engineer beyond the skills I developed on my own.

During the program I worked on several projects as I built my skills as a Ruby developer. I worked on a team over the course of a weekend-long hackathon to build an app that uses iBeacon technology to track how much time workers spent in the office. For our final project, I worked on a three-person team to build a desktop front end and mobile app that helps theater directors connect with more actors. I was the sole Back End developer, using Ruby on Rails to build and document a RESTful API for the rest of the team.

How I Got Here

My respect for backups formed at an early age. And with that, my fear of computers was also laid to rest. It all began when I discovered how to work with DOS on my father’s 286, back in the very early ’90s. Somehow I figured out that the operating system included many commands that I could execute from any directory. I played around with each command, and later discovered PKZIP, the archiving utility. It didn’t take me long to figure out the command syntax I needed to back everything up, spanning multiple floppy disks. I then deleted everything from the computer and restored the whole archive. That was me experimenting with my father’s computer one night at 2:00, sweating bullets, hoping I didn’t just destroy everything.

A few years later, when I had a computer of my own — a 486 running Windows 3.1 — I eventually established a dial-up Mindspring account with 10 MB of space for a website. Seeing that as an opportunity, I taught myself how to build an HTML page with a table-based layout and the Comic Sans font. For what I hope are obvious reasons, that website will stay out of my portfolio. One page of that site became my first blog — a page that was updated every week with a new review and link to a cool website.

These things happened many years ago now. My resumé shows a long history since then of either working in technology support, or taking an active role as an organization’s webmaster and resident tech guru. Even in those roles, I never stopped learning, whether that meant teaching myself PHP, CSS, and WordPress Plugin Development.

What’s Next

I am looking for opportunities where I can contribute to the team’s accomplishments on the first week, even as I continue to grow as a programmer from one week to the next. While I prefer to find a position at a company located in Atlanta, close to a MARTA station, I am open to working further out in the metro Atlanta area for the right organization.

While I am no longer on staff at C4 Atlanta, I remain a member of its Board of Directors as a co-founder, committed to the organization’s mission and future prosperity. I would welcome opportunities to work with companies that support this endeavor in particular.

While I have many interests, my main interest today is to continue my growth as a software engineer. I enjoy the challenge of meeting business needs with well-designed code, and look forward to working with the right people toward that end.